


Close Encounters

by Turbulent_Muse



Series: Eddie Brock is a Cryptid [2]
Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Coffee Shops, Eddie becoming less human, Eddie being creepy, Humor, Other, awkward hospital visits, awkward lunches with your ex, subtle threats with no intention of followthrough
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-30
Updated: 2019-04-14
Packaged: 2019-10-19 15:42:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17604170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Turbulent_Muse/pseuds/Turbulent_Muse
Summary: A sequel to my fic Side Effects. This fic focusses less on the actual changes Eddie goes through, and more on how they affect him.





	1. Noticeable

Over the months Eddie discovers more and more. He can even breathe underwater, if only for a few minutes. He discovered that one by very happy accident while seeing how long he could hold his breath (five minutes). It’s gotten to the point where he’s started having to make an effort to look normal whenever he’s around someone long enough, he has to consciously work to blink and shift in his seat and look winded when he should. He realizes now how stupid it was to try to hide Venom from Anne. Of course she’d figure it out. If nothing else, she’d notice how much extra food he was eating. He’s still always hungry.

“Have you told Dan? About Venom?” He asks her one day when they’ve met up for lunch like they sometimes do now.

“No.” She answers. “I wouldn’t know what to say to him, I don’t think he’d understand. He wasn’t there for as much of what happened as I was. He never…” She didn’t need to finish the sentence. Eddie nodded and made a noise of affirmation.

“We could try explaining to him though, if you wanted to.” Eddie didn’t want to be the reason she was lying to her boyfriend, he didn’t want to ruin another one of her relationships. He’d learned his lesson about that.

“No.” Anne says. Eddie can smell the change in Anne’s emotional state as she gets more reserved.

And Eddie gets it, he does. She wants to keep her life with Dan seperate from the part of her life where her ex has an alien parasite and is becoming less and less human and doesn’t even have the sense to be bothered by it. He wonders if she’s bothered by it.

“But he does know about our lunches, right?”

“He knows I check up on you sometimes, yes. He’s still worried about you, he thinks you should come in for a physical to make sure you’re not dying.”

“Yeah, I, uh, I think we can agree I shouldn’t do that.” Eddie thinks this situation might cause some problems for Anne and Dan down the line, but he doesn’t say anything to Anne, that’s not his place.

**“Don’t like Dan.”**

Venom interjects.

“Shut up, he’s nice.” Eddie scolds.

“This again?” Anne says, and laughs. “Venom, you can’t be mad at him for what happened in the hospital forever.

**“Yes we can.”**

Eddie laughs at the petulance in his tone.

………

Later, Eddie and Venom are back home, checking the message boards about them, when they stumble across something much too…right.

It’s a description of Eddie but with Venom’s eyes and teeth. The post then goes on to describe armed men breaking into Eddie’s apartment and Eddie fighting them. It’s clear to them that it was written by their asshole neighbor.

**“We should eat him.”**

“No. He’s not a bad person…I don’t think.”

**“He’s a rude person.”**

“We’ve been over this! That’s not enough! We are not Hannibal Lecter!”

**“You keep making that reference but refuse to let me watch the context.”**

“Because I worry you’ll get ideas. No eating the neighbor!”

**“Fine. It was a joke anyway…Mostly…Unless you said yes.”**

“Right. Besides, what will all of these paranoid conspiracy theorists think if he suddenly just disappears?”

**“Hmm. You have a point.”**

“You see, this sort of thing needs to be handled with subtlety.”

……

Eddie knocks on the asshole’s door at about 11:00pm. The asshole answers groggily and in pajamas, Eddie is still fully dressed and fully alert.

“Hey, man. Can I come in for a minute?” Eddie doesn’t wait for an answer, just easily pushes his way past and finds a chair to sit in. Asshole neighbor remains standing. Eddie is eerily still as he sits.

“Uh, so…” The other man starts.

“So.” Eddie says. “I just wanted to say thank you for continuing to keep the volume of your music down. Very neighborly of you.”

“Oh! Yeah, uh, no problem man.”

“It’s good to keep things neighborly and friendly, don’t you think?” Eddie says. He has not blinked once this entire time.

“Y-Yeah, definitely, uh—”

“Because if one of us were to do something not neighborly, something that caused problems for the other,” Eddie stands up. “Then we’d have a problem.” He puts a hand on his speechless neighbor’s shoulder. “I don’t want us to have a problem, do you?”

“N-No.” The other man manages to stammer.

“Great! Good talk.” Eddie says, and leaves.

When he gets back inside his own apartment he is smugly satisfied.

“There, I think that ought to keep him from posting anything else about us for a while at least. Maybe forever.”

**“Look at the computer. He has already made another post.”**

“What?!” Eddie walks over to his computer and sees the new post.

_Eddie Brock jsut threatened my life!!!_

Venom laughs.

“Well shit.” Eddie concludes.

**“I think he might be too stupid for subtlety. Look at his other posts, he believes we are a vampire.”**

At this Eddie has to laugh too


	2. Examine

Eddie hears a knock on his door and opens it to find Anne.

“Uh, I wasn’t expecting you.” Eddie says.

“Dan knows.” She says by way of greeting and walks into the apartment.

“Uh, okay.” Eddie starts. “How, or, I mean, why—”

“It was that stupid conspiracy theory website.”

“You’re joking.”

“He found it and when he really noticed how much you’ve changed he started getting worried about your health, thinking there might be lasting effects of having an alien para—”

“Don’t! Don’t use that word. He doesn’t like it.”

“Oh, sorry. Of being…infected by an alien…presence.” Anne says almost questioningly. Eddie nods in affirmation that this phrasing is better. “He wanted to have you checked into the hospital and run a bunch of tests. I had to tell him, to let him know that that was a bad idea.”

“And…I mean, how’d he take it?”

“He was...skeptical that Venom staying with you was a good idea, that he wouldn’t hurt you. He still doesn’t really understand why you’d want Venom to stay.”

Venom growls deep.

“Hey, take it easy.” Eddie says to him. “He just doesn’t know us. It can be hard for people to understand.”

**“Anne understands.”**

“Anne’s different, she was there. She _knows_ you.”

“I tried to explain to him the best I could.” Anne says. “But he’s still worried. Now he’s _insisting_ that you come to the hospital so he can make sure you aren’t dying. No real tests, no other doctors, just checking your vitals.”

Eddie winced.

“Is there any way to talk him out of it?”

“He almost came down here himself, so, no.”

**“We will rip his head from his body.”**

“Great.” Eddie says with a sigh.

…….

Soon Eddie is sitting on an exam table in a locked room with Dan. It’s about as awkward as he expected it to be.

“Um, so…I hope you’re not mad at Anne for not telling you about this sooner.”

**“I hope he is so mad he leaves Anne. Then she can be ours.”**

Eddie’s face flushes with embarrassment.

“No, not at all.” Dan says sincerely. “It wasn’t her secret to tell, so I completely understand. I hope you can trust me as much as you’ve trusted her.”

“Of course.”

**“Never.”**

“Okay, let’s start by taking your height and weight.”

When Eddie steps on the scale the number that pops up is significantly larger than expected.

**“My body mass is very dense.”**

Dan makes a note.

Eddie stifles a wince as Dan takes his temperature.

“Don’t worry about that, it’s fine. It’s normal for it to be that high.”

Dan gives him a worried look and writes something else down.

**“At least let us eat the clipboard.”**

Venom pleads.

“No.” Eddie hisses under his breath.

“What was that?”

“I, uh, I wasn’t talking to you.”

“Oh…Okay.” Dan then takes Eddie’s blood pressure. Then he frowns deeper than before. He immediately puts on his stethoscope and listens to Eddie’s heart. “Your resting heart rate is low. Really low. Almost dangerously low.”

“But not dangerous?”

“No.” Dan begrudgingly admits. “And did you know your breathing isn’t continuous?”

“What?”

“There’s a couple seconds in between each breath.”

**“We metabolize oxygen much more efficiently than the average human. So you need less of it.”**

“Okay, yeah, that’s um, that’s fine. I’m getting all the air I need.” Eddie says to Dan.

“Okay.” Dan says sounding unconvinced and making another note on his clipboard. Then he sighs. “Look, Eddie, why? The parasite—”

Venom growls.

“—Is changing your body fundamentally. It might be too late to reverse some of these changes, even if we were to remove it.”

**“NO! NEVER!”**

“And as far as you and I know it could go back to destroying your organs at any time. So why are you okay having this _thing_ inside of you?”

Venom has had enough of this. Eddie finds himself standing up and just barely stopping himself from lunging forward towards Dan.

“No!” He yells firmly. “We are not going to hurt him!”

**“He wants to separate us, Eddie! Why will he not leave us alone?!”**

Dan has moved to the back wall of the room. Eddie forces his arms down and sits down with effort.

“He’s just worried about me, Venom. He just doesn’t understand. He’s a doctor, it’s his job to make sure I’m okay and not gonna die.”

**“That is _my_ job!”**

“Well, the more people looking out for me the better, right?” Eddie tries to reason.

Venoms begrudgingly makes a noise of assent.

“Good. Now stop threatening him.” Then he focuses his gaze on Dan. “Sorry about that. But it’s safe now, he won’t hurt you.”

Dan looks a bit shaken but still mostly composed. He bravely resumes his line of questioning.

“You and Anne have both said that, that I don’t understand. _What_ don’t I understand, Eddie?”

“Well, being… _with_ Venom, you feel powerful. Like you can do anything. And Venom, he’s…he’s not a bad guy. He risked his life to save the planet and then risked it again to save me. He’s my friend, and he’d die without a host, and if he’s going to be with anyone I want it to be me.”

Dan thought for a minute. “Are you _sure_ you’re not dying?”

“I’m probably more healthy than I’ve ever been before. I certainly feel that way.”

“Okay.” Dan says, and rips up his chart. “Get out of here, Eddie.” He says with a smile. “And if you ever need any kind of help, give me a call.”

“Will do.” Eddie says, and leaves the exam room.

**“It will be…good to have Dan as an ally.”**

Venom says as they leave the hospital.

“You finally coming around about him?”

**“You were right, Eddie. The more people who want to keep you alive the better.”**

“Hey, it’s not just me though, okay? Dan’s gonna on _our_ side.”

**“How do you know?”**

“Because if we ever need his help I’m gonna make sure he knows he’s _our_ doctor, not just mine. We’re both his patients so he’s gotta do what’s right for both of us.”

Venom hums happily. Eddie has hope that things won't be weird between him and Dan forever.

**“Do you think he will still want to help once we win Anne back?”**

Hope is fleeting.


	3. Inhuman

He closes his eyes and inhales.

_Coffee_ is overwhelming. But underneath it he can pick up _bread, chocolate_ , and even deeper there’s _wood, leather, metal_. His sense of smell has been getting better and better lately and today he woke up with a dramatic jump in ability to pick out and identify specific smells. He's enjoying his new awareness of the familiar setting of his favorite coffee shop.

But there’s something else, another smell permeating this little cafe almost as much as the smell of coffee.

**“Humans.”**

Venom provides the answer to his unspoken question. Eddie is pretty sure _he_ doesn’t smell like that anymore. Maybe that’s part of the reason animals act the way they do around him.

The most fearless of pigeons fly off at his approach. Squirrels freeze completely against tree trunks. Dogs on leashes start barking viciously without fail. The feral ones just run. He thinks it’s a little weird that humans don’t notice at this point.

**“Humans have a stunted sense of smell. Plus, they do not react to apex predators the way other animals do.”**

Venom conjures up images of zoos to prove his point.

“Hmm. True.” Eddie mutters under his breath and takes a drink of his coffee.

Although calling this particular concoction coffee might be a stretch, it’s mostly chocolate. They crave chocolate, him and Venom. And it’s easier to indulge in this craving than the ones Eddie would rather not think too much about.

So he drinks his chocolatey drink and eats his chocolatey croissants and leans back and inhales the scents around him.

**“Y’know, we have to go home sometime.”**

“Mmm hmm.”

**“And clean it so it stops smelling terrible.”**

“I think I’ll buy another croissant.”

**“…Later. We have to do that later.”**

Eddie smiles.


End file.
